


Man of Wax

by OrangeOctopi7



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Post canon, headhunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24391906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeOctopi7/pseuds/OrangeOctopi7
Summary: Stan's just enjoying a night watching TV with his brother, but something's... wrong...
Comments: 14
Kudos: 69





	Man of Wax

The TV flickered like an aurora in the darkened living room. Stan was sitting in his recliner, watching a rerun of Ducktective, and Ford was sitting on the chair's arm beside him. He'd finally convinced his brother to watch the show with him.

"Well Ducktective, it looks like you've really  _ quacked  _ the case!" The constable on the screen said.

_ "Don't patronize me."  _ The duck replied flatly.

Stan grinned when that joke actually got a chuckle out of his brother. 

"Hahah, yeah, stupid duck!" He stood up. "Well, I'm gonna use the john, you need anything?"

"An actual chair to sit on would be nice."

Stan chuckled again, pointing at his brother as he walked out of the room. "I love this guy! Don't you go nowhere!"

"I'm going six inches to the left, into your seat!" Ford called after him as he left.

Stan continued smiling to himself as he quickly relieved himself and washed his hands. If Ford took his seat, he'd just sit on the nerd. That'd show him.

When Stan reentered the living room, he was fully expecting his brother to be sitting in his recliner. He wasn't expecting to see his brother lying prone on the floor, headless.

"No… no! Noooooooo!"

Stan fell to his knees. There was no blood. He reached out to hold the body, but it melted away beneath his fingers. The more he tried to save it, the more it melted, until all that was left was a puddle of wax.

No! It couldn't be! It couldn't have all been fake, or just in his head! He could still hear his brother's voice!

" _ Stanley, Stanley, wake up!" _

Something took him by the hand, and suddenly it was completely dark. No light from the TV, or the hallway. His heart pounded against his ribcage and his lungs couldn't cycle through air fast enough as his eyes slowly adjusted. Whatever had grabbed his hand was dangling above him. He blinked, and his vision cleared as much as it could without his glasses. It was Ford, hanging nearly half-way out of his hammock in order to reach down and comfort his brother.

"Are you alright?" Ford asked.

Stan heaved a sigh of relief. "Just a nightmare."

"Obviously it was a bad one."

"I-it was nothing." Stan insisted, feeling his face burn with embarrassment. He pulled his hand out of Ford's grip and rolled over on his side.

"Stanley, you were screaming like you'd just witnessed a murder!"

Stan groaned and buried his face further into his pillow.

_ "Wax Stan! He's been m-murdered!" _ He remembered telling the kids. Everyone had thought he was being over-dramatic. And really, he  _ was _ . It wasn't like the  _ wax figure _ was his  _ brother _ …

"Stanley, please…" Ford had gotten out of his hammock and was now sitting on the little bench beside Stan's.

"... it's stupid…" Stan choked into his pillow.

"I don't care if it's stupid, it's obviously causing you distress!"

The old conman slowly sat up in his hammock, making room for his brother to sit on the hammock beside him.

Stan began to explain about how one day he'd bought a bunch of cursed wax figures. How he stored them away when they stopped making money. How the kids had rediscovered them last summer, and how Mabel had rebuilt one in his image. How when he first glanced it out of the corner of his eye, he'd actually fallen over in shock, because for a quarter of a second, he actually thought Stanford was standing there in the room with him.

"It must have been very lifelike." Ford guessed.

"Heh, yeah, well, you know how good Mabel is. She wasn't kidding when she called it her masterpiece." Stan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "But that's not the really embarrassing part."

Stan proceeded to explain how he'd started treating the wax copy like a real person. How he'd stand it next to him while he sat and ate or watched TV. 

"I guess everyone else just thought I was  _ that vain _ . But I just… Sweet Moses, Stanford, I missed you  _ so much _ that summer. I thought having the kids for the summer would help me feel  _ less _ lonely! And they did, for the most part. But they also reminded me of how we used to be. So I guess I just… wanted you there so bad that I was willing to  _ pretend _ this wax statue was you. I even started  _ talking _ to it, telling it things I wished I could've told you when I thought nobody was watching. How messed up is that?"

Ford rested a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Stan, you experienced some serious trauma, and then proceeded to do your best to suppress it for thirty years. Of  _ course _ you were messed up. That's honestly one of the healthier coping mechanisms you could have gone with."

Stan laughed shakily "Yeah, still pretty messed up, though."

"How does all this relate to your nightmare?"

Stan took another deep breath before continuing. "I guess those cursed wax figures had a grudge against me, or something, cuz the next night, I left to use the john during a commercial break, and when I came back, Wax Stan's head had been chopped clean off. But in my nightmare, it wasn't Wax Stan that lost his head. It was you."

Ford grimaced and nodded. That would certainly make sense. And it made for a very disturbing nightmare.

"But then,  _ you _ were wax. Like… like you'd never really come home at all. Like I'd been  _ pretending _ you were real this whole time." Stan barked a dry laugh. "Guess you're not the only one who feels like what we got now is too good to be true."

Ford frowned and tried to remember what Stan usually did for him when he himself felt this way. He took his brother's hand and interlocked their fingers, squeezing tightly.

"Stanley, look at me." He waited for his brother to make eye contact before continuing. "Do you believe I'm real right now?"

Stan rubbed his thumb over his brother's knuckles, feeling all the wrinkles and bumps in his skin.

"Yeah." He affirmed with conviction.

They just sat there in the lower hammock for a couple of minutes, leaning against each other comfortably. Eventually, Ford broke the silence.

"Do you want to talk about it more?"

Stan paused. Did he  _ want _ to? No, not really. The next part was even  _ more _ embarrassing than everything else. But he felt like he needed to. Like now that he'd started telling the story, he had to finish it, or he'd have it hanging over him forever.

"I held a funeral for you."

"In the nightmare, or…?"

"When I lost Wax Stan's head. I mean, everyone else thought it was just for the wax replica of myself. But to me, it was like… I dunno, a sign or something. The universe was telling me you were gone. I should give up. Move on."

"There was a time when I would have said that was the right course of action for you to take." Ford admitted. "Honestly, when I was out in the multiverse, I thought that was what you had done. But obviously you didn't."

"Well that's the thing. I  _ did  _ give up for a while. For almost a month after that, I never even set foot in the portal lab. I just focused on spending time with the kids, makin' sure they had a good summer."

"What changed your mind?"

"I found two of your Journals in one day, after thirty years of searching. If  _ that's _ not a good sign, I dunno what is."

Ford hugged him. "I'm glad you changed your mind."

"Heh, yeah. Me too." Stan finally cracked a genuine smile. "Heck, I'm glad you changed your mind too, about bein' happy I brought you back."

Ford scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "Now, to be fair--"

"You really wanna have this conversation at 2 in the morning?"

Ford rolled his eyes fondly. "I suppose not." He climbed back into his hammock.

They'd both been lying in silence for a few minutes when Ford heard the sound of suppressed laughter from the bottom bunk.

"What?" He asked.

"I guess, now that I got all that off my chest… in hindsight, treating that wax statue like a real guy is a  _ little  _ funny."

"Go to sleep, Stan."

**Author's Note:**

> I was doing a pretty good job of posting a new chapter of one of my stories every weekend for the last few weeks, but then I went to visit my Grandma for Memorial Day. I'd thought I could finish a new chapter of OBVIOUS JOKE on the drive up, but I realized I needed a lot of reference from Journal 3, which I didn't bring with me. So here's a one-shot I came up with on the drive back home.


End file.
